A nest of hornets - Part 7

The look of fear and anger upon Rayna Alden's face remained in Caitlyn's mind, even as she struggled to hold on to Vezzpa. From the harness where Vezzpa's wings and stinger attached to, something else emerged. Metal attachments that rolled down Vezzpa's arms and legs and, with a surprising new strength, the villain stopped them both in their tracks. Caitlyn had tried to get Vezzpa out of the building, but the super-villain had her own ideas.

"Exo-zzkeletal zztrength enhancerzz." The lips of Vezzpa curled into a cruel smile as she curled back a hand, the attachments wrapping around her fingers as she made a fist. "Drainzz power like the dickenzz, but worth it againzzt zzomeone like you."

The punch didn't have the sheer power of the transformed Professor Halstrom, nor the brutality of Blockchain's attacks, but it struck Caitlyn hard enough to rock her, loosening her grip. As soon as Vezzpa had the chance, she ripped herself from Caitlyn's hands, taking to the air in an electronic buzz that faded as she flew back to the room where the helicopter had crashed.

Caitlyn wasn't going to let her escape. Not this time. With a single leap, she cleared the break in the wall, landing on one of the still-intact helicopter blades and looked around. There was no way Vezzpa would run without the money she had stolen, but the woman had foxed Caitlyn again. She had no intention of flying away. Not yet, at least.

Behind the wreck of the helicopter, Caitlyn saw a door closing and knew that was where Vezzpa had gone. Even knowing that, Caitlyn had to do one thing first. Leaning into the wreckage of the helicopter, she checked the pilot. Not a thorough check, but enough to know her stupidity hadn't killed the man. Her stupidity and Vezzpa's callousness and disregard for anyone else. That was about to end.

With a thought, she wondered whether the suit had other visual capabilities. She had already used the night vision more than once. If it had that, it stood to reason that it could have infrared and if it did, that would give her an advantage to find Vezzpa. Sure enough, as soon as she thought about it, the view through the mask of the suit changed and Caitlyn turned her head to find the hottest human figure she could see.

Powering those wings, the stinger and those strength enhancers would take nothing short of a miniature nuclear reactor, or something similar, and power like that would give off heat. Sure enough, up ahead, rushing past a room so cold that Caitlyn now knew what the liquid nitrogen was for, a blazing light ran through the building. That had to be her.

Except, as she reached the cold room Vezzpa had passed, she felt something strange. As though something called to her. Despite her urgency in capturing Vezzpa, Caitlyn stopped outside the cold room. Something inside there felt familiar. It felt ... trapped. Without realising it, she tried to open the door and, on finding it locked, she broke the lock and opened it anyway. Only to find something strange.

With a cold fog creeping along the floor, Caitlyn saw row upon row of tubes, each holding some kind of liquid, of varying colours, that slopped inside the tubes with sluggish movements, as though the liquid were alive. Those tubes, however, felt wrong, dirty, incomplete. The thing that had called to her sat at the other side of the room. Two things. One tube with a sliver of red in it, black in the other. These felt right. They felt clean.

Even as she reached out toward the tubes, she found her hand smashing the tubes, releasing their contents which fell upon Caitlyn's suit and became absorbed by it. They were once part of the suit she wore and were part of it again. The fact that she felt pretty certain her hand had moved without her permission bothered Caitlyn far more. That was something to think about later. Right now, her little daydream aside had given Vezzpa too great a head start. She had lost her again.

Moving back to the entrance to the room, she found Vezzpa creeping past the door, clutching the money bags to her chest. That surprised Caitlyn, but not near as much as the sheepish grin on Vezzpa's face, or the little 'what-can-you-do' shrug.

"Isn't it customary for villains to escape when they get the chance?" She curled her hand into a fist. "Need I ask?"

"Dead end. No doorzz." Vezzpa had straightened up and started sidling to the side. "Don't zzupozze you'd give me a head zzstart?"

"You already had one." She pounced forward, missing Vezzpa by centimetres as the villain jumped into the air, wings flapping fast. "You'll have to come back tomorrow and try again."

The concussion sting struck her in the chest, once again, only this time it didn't hurt anywhere near as much. Using that exo-skeleton must have put an even greater strain on Vezzpa's power reserves than she had thought. Even so, her wings appeared to need much less power than the stinger, and Vezzpa looped and jinked as she flew through the corridors, back to the hole in the roof and freedom.

What Caitlyn needed was some kind of grapple gun as her fingers missed Vezzpa's foot by fractions of an inch. As she thought that, something shot out from her hand, coiling around Vezzpa's ankle and Caitlyn heard a snap as that thing gripped Vezzpa too tight. The villain fell from the air, howling in pain, clutching for her ankle. She was, after all, only a human using tech, not a super.

Vezzpa wasn't done, though, and as Caitlyn loomed over the woman, she struck out with one last attack, the concussion sting hitting Caitlyn in the face and sending the building swaying, stars exploding behind her eyes and giving Caitlyn a pain she hadn't felt since the school's last dodgeball tournament. Even through that pain, however, that thing that had wrapped around Vezzpa's leg was still attached and Caitlyn used it to find the straps of the harness attached to Vezzpa, ripping it from her body and tossing it behind her.

Caitlyn could feel herself wobbling, struggling to stay conscious. Through fading vision, she managed to pull Vezzpa closer and launched a final punch toward the woman's chin, hoping that she still had enough control not to knock her head clear off her body. Then, with Vezzpa unconscious, she thought about the mask falling away from her face and vomited to the side. At least, she hoped the mask had listened to her thoughts. She didn't want to wake up in a mask filled with puke.

-+-

Back in the chamber ...

Raymond Alden opened his eyes to find a squad of technicians, scientists and doctors hovering over him. Alarms were sounding, emergency lighting strobing, and he pushed a thousand hands away from him, fighting to get to his feet. The last thing he remembered was a board meeting and a pain that felt as though it struck from the soles of his feet to the roots of his hair. That pain had gone, now, but something felt very different.

As he returned to consciousness, he saw the room he found himself in looked like something from a war zone. Shattered and broken equipment lay tossed against the wall, mixed with concrete rubble. The bed he laid on had collapsed, listing to the side and he looked down at himself to see blood over the surgical gown he wore.

Not his blood. A quick check upon himself showed he had no injuries. Through the blaring of the alarms, he heard urgent voices. Some talking to him, though he couldn't make out the words. Others were to the side, clustered around something on the floor. No, not something. Someone. The people talking to him tried to hold him down, but he pushed them aside, watching in curious detachment as they flew away from him.

"Rayna?" His voice sounded strange, deeper, rougher, but a quick cough brought his own voice back. "What has happened to my daughter?"

He pressed a hand onto the shoulder of one doctor and found it odd that the man howled in pain, curling away from the touch. The other doctors ignored him as they worked on Rayna and Raymond could only stand there as he saw the pool of blood around her head. A broken tube sat beside her, empty, and Raymond now recognised it and realised exactly where he was.

"I've never seen anything like it. She's stabilising." One doctor wrapped his stethoscope across the back of his neck as he checked Rayna's pulse and only then saw Raymond standing over him. "It's alright, Mr Alden. She's going to be alright. I need a gurney in here! Let's get her to a hospital. Now!"

"What happened?" He didn't feel quite like himself. He felt ... distant. Above it all. "Tell me!"

"We got caught in the middle of a battle between supers, sir. Mostly minor injuries and ... of course, you're not interested in them." Another doctor, no, a technician. Wade. Raymond recognised him. "Your daughter saved your life. Protected you from the ..."

"Which supers?" He looked down at Rayna. So small. She looked broken. Like a doll. The technician, Wade, didn't answer fast enough. "Which supers?"

"That new one. The one like Black Staff?" Wade looked nervous, avoiding looking at Raymond's face. "And a new villain. One with an insect gimmick. I think she's called 'Vezzpa'?"

"The new one. The new Black Staff?" He mumbled, not realising he repeated Wade's words. "Blood Obsidian. She did this? She did this!"

He punched out toward a nearby wall without thinking and didn't feel a thing as his fist smashed a hole into the concrete. Blood Obsidian. That's what she called herself. He had heard her say as much on audio from one of his drones. Oh, Principle and Fear had destroyed one, but not all of them. Blood Obsidian had fought a battle, right here, in one of his facilities. He had had high hopes for that girl. High hopes indeed. How disappointing.

-+-

Elsewhere ...

Caitlyn felt as though someone had coloured her lips with a lipstick made from C4. Her nose felt around the same size as her entire head and when she tried to open her eyes, all she could see were thin slits. She stank of vomit and had a painful memory of hoping she had removed her mask. Trying to sit up was a problem, mostly to do with the army that were now performing heavy-booted drills in her skull and partly because of something else.

She tried to push herself up, but her hands wouldn't move from behind her back. She blinked several times before rocking from side to side until she managed to move herself on to her knees. She hadn't even looked around herself yet and tried to remember where she was, or had been. Then she saw him, sitting on the hood of the car about ten feet away and she recognised him. The cop she had rescued from Vezzpa and her gang. Now she realised what was wrapped around her wrists. Handcuffs.

"Welcome back." The cop leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together and looked at her with narrowed eyes. "Kid, we need to talk."

That sounded more than a little ominous.